R.I.P. John Erwin (The Original He-Man)

ANI-MOVIES, *Belle

Possibly acting as a sequel to Summer Wars, this was yet another movie by Mamoru Hosoda about people coming together on the internet to fight an aggressive force. Still borrowing from the Digimon prequel short film he directed in 1999, Hosoda reuses the premise again in his 2021 spectacular, Belle. This was a non-romantic version of Beauty And The Beast, both the original story and the Disney movie, despite the fact this isn't a straight up bootleg of the Oscar-winning animated epic. Studio Chizu, the studio behind this film, already did a movie with a similar title to the source material named The Boy And The Beast, although there's no connection. Hosoda wrote and directed this feature, which is a digital age musical, or at least there are songs frequently done by the title character similar to an idol singer. Belle is a cross between a slice-of-life story and a modern fantasy.

Similar to Oz in Summer Wars, Belle has a virtual internet of its own labeled U, and the reclusive Suzu has just signed on to it. U makes an online avatar of the user's personality and mixing it in with some of their physical appearance, and it transforms Suzu into a pink-haired diva with the strength to finally get over her anxiety and start singing. She had been reclusive since her mother passed away years ago when she sacrificed herself to save a child from drowning, but now under the moniker of Belle does Suzu find the heart to tap into her amazing singing talent. Belle gets fans from all over even though no one except Suzu's hacker friend Hiroka who manages to keep her online identity secret. At one of her concerts, Belle's performance is interrupted by a rogue player known as the Dragon but referred to as the Beast. Dragon defeats the U security force and Suzu wants to find out who this mystery person is. Belle manages to find the Dragon's castle thanks to the help of a quintet of choir singers who in real life knew Suzu's mother and act as her fairy godmothers. Belle befriends Dragon, but he departs when an angel avatar arrives. Suzu is determined to learn more about who the Dragon really is which leads to several revelations concerning her friends from school, and her own family life, including the boy she's had a crush on for most of her life. Not to spoil the ending, but this is not a girl-gets-the-boy kind of anime as its more of an introspective of trying to find someone's inner self and how they can use it to help others.

Studio Chizu has come a long way from before they were formed when they did The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, the title character of which is their company's mascot. Belle is an astounding accomplishment of CGI and traditional animation with some of the most sweeping songs in an anime since Macross: Do You Remember Love. The 2-hour long movie is at certain times unnecessarily prolonged either uncovering the backgrounds of the secondary characters whereas others who secretly play a larger part in the plot that the film never gives enough time to. The divide between the online and offline worlds isn't too jarring, even though the virtual realm of U is like something out of dream, most specifically Belle's musical numbers. When Suzu is using her Belle persona, you can see her channeling the Disney Princess that is desperate to break out, and the movie is spectacular at showing how Suzu can be this way in real life and virtually. The movie contains possibly the greatest anime movie soundtrack of the century so far, although this would have worked better for an actual stage musical instead of trying to tell a coming-of-age story, so it suffers from serious pacing issues. Belle will be a valuable viewing experience for lovers of animation, despite the fact that some Disney fanatics might see it as being a wannabe of their fairy tale features.

ANI-MOVIES, *The Return Of The King

Despite what a ton of misinformed fans might think, Rankin/Bass' adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Return Of The King was not picking up where Ralph Bakshi's The Lord Of The Rings left off which wasn't allowed to continue due to low sales. Rankin/Bass had previously done an animated treatment of The Hobbit into, of all things, a single film and not a drawn-out trilogy. Coming out in 1980, just a year after Bakshi's theatrical release, this feature-length made-for-TV movie premiered on ABC marking a major turning point for Rankin/Bass where they shifted into producing 2D animation as opposed to their holiday-themed stop-motion specials such as Rudolph. Two years later, they would create the cult classic fantasy, The Last Unicorn, and this led to more animated TV series like Thundercats and Silverhawks. Most of the actual animation was handled by the now defunct anime studio Topcraft which some of their former staff helped set up Studio Ghibli. Even though it's based on the final book of the Rings trilogy, this special doesn't cover the entire novel as the first-third of it dusted over relying on the watcher to have to either read the books up until that point or at least seen the Bakshi movie to cover the space left from the previous two books. This is a major turn off as the viewer has to have an entire history lesson laid out to them before they can even start watching the real story.

Beginning at Bilbo Baggins' 129th Birthday, his nephew Frodo along with his Hobbit mates plus Gandalf at Elrond's pad in Rivendell. Apparently, Bilbo is going senile in his elongated old age as he forgets what Frodo did with his old ring as he notices the lad is missing his ring finger. Gandalf hired a bard to narrate the saga's finale, or at least the parts that the movie covers. The opening actually goes on for nearly 15 minutes as there are two different sets of credits, some of which flashes back to scenes from The Hobbit. The story-within-the-story unfolds sometime after Gollum had Frodo attacked by Shelob which completely removes one of the fiercest monsters in the whole trilogy from being animated. Frodo is held captive by the remaining Orcs in Mordor while Samwise finds the One Ring lying at the front door. The gardener first decides to carry the Ring on his own to Mount Doom and destroy it, but wastes an inordinate amount of time figuring out that he's not strong enough to bear the Ring's evil on his own, this includes a pointless dream sequence where he sees himself as a conqueror and then coming to his senses when he envisions getting married and having kids, so he doubles back to free Frodo. Thanks to a deus ex machina given to the Hobbits from Galadriel who never even shows up here, Sam is able to get through the fortress' invisible door and retrieves Frodo after learning all the guards killed themselves fighting over his missing mithril cloak which they left outside along with the Ring in the first place. Frodo and Sam disguise themselves as orcs to hide their precense only to get drummed into a marching band of whip-happy soldiers who get into a fight with some more of Mordor's forces which they break loose from. Meanwhile in Minas Tirith, Gandalf is leading the defenses against Sauron's forces. The Riders of Rohan arrive only to have their King Theoden keel over dead just because it started getting cloudy. The Nazgul leader appears but is quickly dispatched by Eowyn who disguised herself as a soldier and kills him just as Aragorn finally shows up with reinforcements, although Legolas and Ghimli are totally absent from the whole picture. Gandalf and his crew plan an assault on Mordor all while Gollum catches up with Frodo and Sam. Frodo enters Mount Doom on his own just as he gives into the Ring's evil, leaving Sam to spend the next few days looking for his now invisible master inside the volcano. Gollum bites Frodo's ring finger off and at long last gets his precious back, but trips into the lava destroying the Ring once and for all, thus killing Sauron and vanquishing all his forces. Frodo and Sam catch a break from the errupting volcano thanks to the damn eagles coming back from their saga-long coffee break. The story cuts forward back to Bilbo's birthday where the old Hobbit is retiring to the Middle Earth version of Heaven, and Frodo comes along with Gandalf leaving Sam to finish his biography.

The Return Of The King helped set the stage for 80s fantasy features even though it doesn't really stick the landing as a sequel to Rankin/Bass' The Hobbit or as a conclusion to the entire Tolkien trilogy. Considering it skips over the opening chapters of the book it's based on, there is an unreasonable amount of narration that Gandalf has to fill you in on, so they might as well just as made this a radio drama. Comparing this to Rankin/Bass' prior venture of The Hobbit is the that one covered the majority of its book in a mere 78 minutes, whereas here it added an extra 20 minutes of material most of which inconsequential ballads, despite how memorable the whips song might be. Topcraft's animation is above par for a TV movie, but its just not worth it as it carries on for way longer than even Tolkien fans would feel comfortable with. The voice acting is good with Orson Bean returning as Bilbo as well as Froto, John Huston coming back as Gandalf, and Brother Theodore reprising his role of Gollum, but the best is Roddy McDowell as Sam which makes the Bakshi version of the character look like a stuttering buffoon. It's easy enough to skip this film even if Bakshi's attempt left you wanting for more, so unless you're really itching to see some exceptional 80s animation it might not be worth your time.

ANI-MOVIES, *Spirit Untamed

DreamWorks' Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimmaron from 2002 was memorable enough to remake the western adventure into an original animated TV series for Netflix in 2017 titled Spirit Riding Free which was more geared towards girls since My Little Pony had rekindled interest in equines just not the talking pastel-colored kinds with wings. This followed up in a totally separate theatrical release through Universal inspired by the TV series called Spirit Untamed in a fully-CGI animated movie that unfortunately underperformed at the box office making a profit just above the production cost. Written by Kristin Haun with producer Aury Wallington, the movie is a fresh take on the Spirit franchise that acts as a remake of the Netflix show while also acting as a pseudo-sequel to the original movie, so you don't need to have sampled any of the previous Spirit installments to watch this.

At the dawn of the 20th Century, young Lucky is the daughter of a train designer Jim Prescott and circus horse rider Milagro. Milagro dies from an accident during her act, leaving baby Lucky sent to live with Jim's rich father and his older sister Cora. A decade passes with Lucky being casted out of her grandfather's home after she unintentionally sabotages his efforts to run for governor, so she and Cora head back to the west to live with Jim in his town of Miradero. On the train ride, Lucky witnesses some wild horses running by lead by a fiery mustang. Once in Miradero, Lucky finds that stallion had been captured by some crooked-looking wranglers and taken to a local corral. She calls the horse Spirit and tries to win the horse's affections. Lucky befriends resident girls Abigail and Pru who teach her how to charm Spirit, even though her efforts set the horse free, and they all discover that Spirit has a herd he watches over. The herd gets taken by the same wranglers from before lead by the evil Hendricks who is a dead ringer for Nasty Canasta from the old Daffy Duck cartoons, and they get away in their own stolen train, so not only are they horse thieves but train robbers too. Lucky and her friends plan to stop Hendricks' and his gang before they make off with herd on an illegal boat at a harbor, all while Spirit and Lucky form a close bond to each other. Spirit ends up getting taken too, but Lucky's father shows up in his own faster prototype train engine and are there to help the girls stop Hendricks. Unlike in the TV series, Lucky says goodbye to Spirit who returns to his herd in the wild instead of becoming her pet horse.

Spirit Untamed acted accordingly as its own movie which can be enjoyed as a totally solo story, even though DreamWorks had to produce this with a lower than normal budget and having the animation done by an outside studio. The CGI animation is signifigantly better than what was done for the Spirit Riding Free series and is theatrical quality. In an alternate take from the TV show, the movie characters are given a more layered backstory and depth especially for Lucky learning on the legacy her mother left behind. The only true setback is Abigail's bad habit of singing off-key ditties at the most inappropriate times. The winning draw for this is the voice actors with Walton Coggins living up to his career of playing bad guys as Hendricks, Jake Gyllenhaal as Lucky's passive father, and Julianne Moore as the well-meaning but slightly snobbish aunt. The entire film is an invigorating take on westerns but steered more towards girls bringing a breeze of equality to the male-centric genre.

It is the year 2025...

 

ANI-MOVIES, *The Lord Of The Rings

Despite what a ton of Peter Jackson fanatics might claim, the 1978 animated version of The Lord Of The Rings by the ambitious Ralph Bakshi set the standard for fantasy movies and experimental animation that would become a hallmark in the following decade of the 80s. There had been at least one prior adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's work made a year prior of the prelude novel, The Hobbit, in a full-length animated TV movie by Rankin/Bass Productions which was the foundation for their foray into 2D fantasy animation that would eventually find its way to pop culture icons like Thundercats. Bakshi had already set a record for animating independent pictures such as Heavy Traffic, even though his first production was an animated version of Fritz The Cat making it one of the first ever Rated-X cartoon movies, but his prior work on the original fantasy epic Wizards helped secure him as a worthy director of Tolkien's works which had just reportedly gone into the public domain at the time. The screenplay for the film was written by Chris Conkling who has an extended family history in the entertainment industry, and Peter S. Beagle who wrote The Last Unicorn which helped put him in the direction of having it animated by Rankin/Bass a few years later. Bakshi's plan was to release the original trilogy of novels as a movie duology with the first one covering the majority of The Fellowship Of The Ring and most of The Two Towers. The flaw in this plan was that the first feature didn't make enough money, therefore the follow-up never got made, which left The Return Of The King to be adapted in a TV animated movie once again handled by Rankin/Bass a year after Bakshi's theatrical release, even though they had planned on doing their own take on the final book to act as a sequel to their treatment of The Hobbit. Despite what most people believe, there was no direct correlation between Bakshi and Rankin/Bass' takes on Middle Earth. Bakshi's film utilized the rotoscoping that he employed in making Wizards while still using traditional cel animation even though the cinematography makes it appear as if the live-action actors were inconsistent with more cartoonish characters. The Lord Of The Rings was initially put out by United Artists, but it has since changed hands with Warner Bros who subsequently packaged it with the Rankin/Bass animated Tolkien features, so this gave many people the impression that all three movies were meant to be an intended trilogy. The music by Leonard Rosenman gained its own notoriety as being one of the greatest cult soundtracks of all time. Some of the characters and storyboards were designed by comics veterans like Mike Ploog who also drew some of the infamous movie posters. All this talent culminated in an incredible movie, even though there were some big differences between the final product and the source material.

Not wanting to go over the entire 2 1/2 novels that the movie covers, I'll remark on the differences between the film and the books. The style is very consistent with fantasy publications of the time such as Conan and Dungeons And Dragons even though the books gave a more traditional impression of Middle Ages illustrations. Some of the character's behavior is really toned down from what Peter Jackson would do, like where Bilbo turns into Dracula after seeing the Ring for the first time in years and instead sulks at the legacy his adventures had brought upon his family. There is some amazing action scenes in the close quarters fighting such as Boromir taking way more arrows and still living through it to give his final words to Aragorn, but the real piece of resistance are the epic battles especially the battle of Helm's Deep that Bakshi used several costumed actors getting rotoscoped into a memorable final fight. Some of the characters might look off model from what you might expect such as Aragorn's appearance made some viewers see him as being Native American, while others like the elves and dwarves were mostly indistinguishable from the regular humans, even though the Hobbits resembled short persons. Some of the cast are overplayed like Sam being an overly-hyper comic relief, Gandalf acting like a fidgety old man than an weathered wizards, but the most different is Frodo who is much more reserved in this film than other adaptations have taken, plus this version of Gollum is a bit more timid than he usually is shown. The fact that the movie is an abridged rendition on the Rings trilogy means that some passages are totally left out, plus the quick jumps of one setting to another doesn't help the pacing. The major plus for the movie is it gave a grand image of what the world of Middle Earth looks like when before it was usually seen as something spraypainted on the side of the van, where here it manages to flesh out the chaotic realms of Mordor and Rohan. The film does a good enough job covering the mass of Tolkien's trilogy that it signed on to do in its single installment.

The Lord Of The Rings acted as the spark for several fantasy epics that followed in its stead such as Legend, Krull, and of course the Peter Jackson films. This also ignited interest in the fantasy genre which had been overshadowed by sci-i in the 1970s via Star Wars and helped found the basis of several fandoms in RPGs, video games, costuming, and storytelling. It's hard to say if Dungeons And Dragons would still be as successful to this day if it weren't for Bakshi's works. The vocal cast is impressive with John Hurt as Aragorn, and Anthony Daniels as Legolas, also a good portion of the actors going on to be in the animated version of Watership Down. The movie is not flawless and has some deep unsteadiness from the source material, but ultimately helped shape the animation industry at a time when Disney was barely keeping its head above water.

ANI-MOVIES, *Time Of Eve: The Movie

A compilation movie of an ONA series is a rarity among anime releases, but the 6-episode Time Of Eve created by Yasuhiro Yoshiura who prior to this only did independent shorts was a fan favorite. Animeigo did a stellar job putting this out with a fundraiser that made over 1000% their goal for its American Blu-Ray release. The ONA came out in 2008, and the collected film was put out in 2010 which won several animation awards. This sci-fi slice-of-life takes the humans + robots premise and brings it a little more down to Earth away from the cerebral themes of cyberpunk anime like Ghost In The Shell.

Taking place in the foreseeable future, people own the generic model robots along with the more human-like types that are largely similar to humans aside from a large glowing ring projecting over their head appearing as an electronic halo. There is a bias from an ethics council committed to stopping human reliance on robots and mistaking them for actual people. One place that tries to keep off the ethics council's radar is a cafe for humans and robots called Time Of Eve, which is such a ridiculous premise on its own as robots aren't capable of consuming coffee but nonetheless attracts robots during their time off from being servants and can hang out to be accepted as equals. The one rule the cafe has is not to treat any patron different from a person whether they are really a robot as their halo disappears when they enter the establishment. Two curious high school boys find out about this place after one of them checks his robot's activity log and that she happens to be a regular at Time Of Eve. This leads to both of them learning more about human/robot relations, and how their lives have been enriched by the robot they themselves own.

It's interesting to see a 21st Century anime still incorporating Isaac Asimov robot laws and put it in a post-modern setting which this anime does in spades. The cafe regulars are an eclectic bunch that will surprise you who actually are robots, and the dub cast is well done. The only thing that works against this compilation movie is that there is one segment that continues directly after the other where the two main characters are suddenly wearing completely different clothes in the same setting, like they quickly changed outfits during a commercial break. The film edition is currently available on streaming and an uncommon feature whose subject matter about artificial intelligence was seriously ahead of its time.

MISC. MANGA, *Flavor Girls

Loic Locatelli-Kournwsky had some of her work printed in English such as Persephone and Pocahontas: Princess Of The New World, but her Ghibli-styled artwork and storytelling was on full display in her original mini-series of Flavor Girls. With art assistance by Eros de Santiago, Loic's magical girl saga goes the route that certain sailor-themed superheroes never even dared to try. Boom Studios released this in three separate issues and then in a hardcover graphic novel about teenage girls whose mission is to literally defend the world against space invaders.

A race of aliens called the Argatha loom in their huge starship in Earth's orbit continuously attack the human population even though their main target is an enchanted piece of shrubbery known as the Mother Tree. To protect the tree and the planet, a trio of costumed girls called the Sacred Fruit Guardians is formed, although they are billed as the Flavor Girls. A fourth member of their group emerges after the latest alien assault, and she had to discover her potential as a superhero by getting some serious training. The team consists of Naoka the leader, the easy-going Camille, the reserved one called V, and the newbie Sara who all use their botanical powers to keep the Argatha at bay.

The first mini-series told a solid story of Sara's journey from normal girl to magical girl with a few surprising revelations regarding some of the secondary characters. The current series titled Flavor Girls: Return To The Mothership explores more of the aliens' background and an underwater expediion with Naoka's mother leads to a startling secret. The artwork is outstanding, even though the character interactions are sometimes hit-or-miss. If you want to wait for a complete series compilation or just collect each volume on their own, this mahou shoujo comic is worth considering.

ANI-MOVIES, *Abominable

During the span of a single year, three totally separate animated movies about sasquatch cryptids came out in 2018-19. One was Smallfoot by Warner Bros. with the other being Missing Link from Laika, but Abominable from Universal Studios was done as a joint production between DreamWorks and Pearl Studio who most Americans might know from later on making the Netflix original movies Over The Moon and The Monkey King. The Chinese-based animation studio helped DreamWorks on several other titles like Turbo, Home, Trolls, and The Croods, but has gone on to creating animated features of their own. The plot is original written by director Jill Culton, a former Pixar animator who became the first female director of a feature-length CGI movie in Sony's Open Season. The film is your standard kid-meets-creature story, except this one takes place in modern day China, so it was able to see the big country from the point of view of Gen-Z children. In some ways, this movie was able to represent the dynamics of a Chinese family better than Turning Red did.

Starting in downtown Shanghai, a young yeti has been captured by reclusive rich explorer, Mr. Burish, who spent most of his life trying to capture one of the big hairy fellows and proving it to the whole world. The yeti escapes and happens upon the rooftop getaway of Yi, a teenager who spends most of her time doing several odd jobs trying to earn money for a trip she was originally going to take with her late father. Yi has a talent for playing violin even though she only does it when thinking about her father. Yi takes care of the yeti she calls Everest after she figures the creature comes from the Himalayas when looking at a billboard photo. She vows to return Everest home, and her neighbors Peng and Jin get roped along after Burnish's men track them leaving town on a cargo ship. They reach a port and are carried off in a crate by truck, but end up on their own in a forest where Everest shows off his magical powers being able to manipulate nature by creating fruits appear out of nowhere, making the landscape move like a wave that they ride in a boat, and enlarging dandelions so that they can float across the mountains. Burnish and his crew eventually track Everest and his teen friends to a bridge leading back to the yeti home, even though Burnish suddenly has a change of heart and allows them all to go. At this point, the movie decides to pull a bait-and-switch villain which was a huge cliche of animated movies of the time as its revealed Burnish's zoologist Dr. Zara is really planning on taking Everest on her own and selling him off to the highest bidder. Yi's violin playing manages to indirectly free Everest and her friends causing Zara to drive off a cliff. The kids see Everest home and then plan for their possible next adventure thanks to some supplies from the reformed Mr. Burnish.

Abominable was a big enough hit for DreamWorks that they managed to continue the story in a sequel TV series on Netflix. The movie has some fair characters in it, even though Pearl Studio recycled the annoying little kid Peng for their film Over The Moon as the main character's bratty stepbrother. The cast is equally acceptable, especially Eddie Izzard as Burnish who makes a career of playing well-meaning antagonists, and of course James Hong makes a quick but memorable cameo. My only real complaint about this film is it's guilty of the same crime that numerous movie trailers do of having a great cover version of a pop song like Go Your Own Way that doesn't appear at all on the soundtrack. The violin take on this great song never showed up in the movie and that's a real shame.

ANI-MOVIES, *The Boy And The Heron

Even though The Wind Rises from 2013 was supposed to be the absolute final movie by the godlike Hayao Miyazaki(for reals this time!), that didn't stop the living legend from doing yet another swansong a decade later in The Boy And The Heron. Loosely based on the 1937 book of How Do You Live?, this Studio Ghibli release was set to coincide with the 2020 Olympics that was delayed because of the coronavirus, but the majority of the film featured hand-drawn animation, so it was extended until 2023 produced by Ghibli veteran Toshio Suzuki. Toho initially released it and went to be one of the biggest selling Japanese movies in the history of cinema. This otherwordly epic harkens back to Miyazaki's earlier fantasy works like Spirited Away and Ponyo which presents a sprawling story that is very unclear on exactly how the magic in this unearthly setting works.

In the throes of the Pacific War, Tokyo is attacked and young Mahito's mother dies in a hospital fire. His father runs a munitions factory and later marries his deceased wife's younger sister Natsuko who is going to give birth to their own child. Mahito and his father move into Natsuko's family estate where a mysterious tower has been closed off for decades. Despite not fitting in with the new kids in the neighborhood, Mahito bashes a rock into his head making a large scar which we learn later on that he did to cope with the loss of his mother and getting used to his new surroundings. The boy now has a scar on him with the right part of his hair shaved off and is recovering at home while being harassed by a gray heron bird. Natsuko goes missing, so Mahito goes to the tower where he believes she has gone to. Along with the old maid Kiriko, Mahito journeys into the tower but fades away when he falls for an illusion of his deceased mother. The boy is sent to a world filled with oceans and islands where the heron is revealed to be a person called the Birdman who wears the heron body like a suit. Despite their frustration with each other, the two of them agree to work together for find Natsuko currently being imprisoned by a kingdom of huge parakeets. They get help from a girl named Hime with pyrokinetic abilities and a younger version of Kiriko. The entire world is held together by the will of Hime's granduncle, and the firestarter is also the youthful version of Mahito's mother from another point in the past, so the younger Hime is encountering her future son at the same time that he is discovering this mystic realm. The Granduncle offers Mahito the chance to take his place and keep this hidden world stable and be free of the harshness of real life. Mahito rejects this deciding to go back to his family along with Natsuko, leaving the younger Hime and Kiriko to go back to their time. The door to the magical land is permanently shut off as Mahito and his aunt/stepmother greet his father when the story cuts to two years after WWII where his new family moves back to Tokyo with the Birdman just leaving and not heard from again.

The Boy And The Heron can be a struggle to sit through at some points while watching it as is another story of a child being sent to an isekai world, except that Miyazaki regularly declines to explain how the laws of physics behave in this dream realm. It's visually the greatest one Miyazaki has worked on since Spirited Away, but the lush animation unfortunately takes away from the character motivations and what drives them. The film is more interested in underlining the look of a fantasy world than focusing attention on the rich cast. The dub is unusual but effective starring child actor Luca Padovan as Mahito, plus two different Batmans with Christian Bale as Mahito's father and Robert Pattison as the cryptic Birdman. If you're looking for another feature from Studio Ghibli to show your kids like My Neighbor Totoro, you might want to hold off on playing this one for them as it's a bit more for those who liked Howl's Moving Castle because of its mature themes.

Aaravos greets his fellow humans

ANI-MOVIES, *Wallace And Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

After 31 years, Feathers McGraw finally returns in this second full-length Wallace And Gromit stop-motion animated movie. Acting as the sixth film in the franchise, Vengeance Most Fowl has Nick Park's eccentric inventor and his faithful canine companion in their latest escapade. Since the last movie was 16 years ago, longtime fans of Aardman Animations were given a serious treat since first watching the cartoon duo's debut in 1989. The art of claymation is still alive and kicking in the newest chapter of the international hit.

Wallace owes a bunch of money to collectors for all his crackpot creations, so the fully automated robot gnome he made called Norbot to help Gromit in their garden gets the attention of the neighbors to hire Norbot out for lawn maintenance. The criminal penguin Feathers McGraw is still imprisioned in the nearby zoo, but manages to hack into Norbot's system to create an entire army of mechanical gnomes that he secretly plans to use for his jailbreak and get back the diamond he first stole in The Wrong Trousers. Wallace gets the blame for all of the burglaries that have hit the small English town, so he and Gromit get into an even greater chase sequence to stop Feathers and his army of clockworks along with his submarine which of course has an organ in it like the Nautilus.

Vengeance Most Foul is a complete return to form from this long overdue sequel. Not since The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit has Aardman had a feature film as up to specs as this one. The gags are corny but so welcome, the animation is fluid and Nick Park is free to do this without production notes from DreamWorks, and the voice acting is cracking with Ben Whitehead being a fine replacement for Peter Sallis as the original Wallace. You will be surprised at how splendidly Aardman bounced back after their Chicken Run follow up didn't fly as high as they wanted to. This is something for the entire family to enjoy for generations to come and a new standard classic.

As if 2025 wasn't bad enough, Wallace had to go ahead and make Skynet.

 

ANI-MOVIES, *Despicable Me

Illumination's first animated feature-length movie was the begining of the infamous Despicable Me franchise. The company was founded in 2007 when former Fox producer Chris Meledandri started his own studio partially owned by Universal and Comcast. Klaus creator Sergio Pablos pitched the idea to do a film about a well-meaning supervillain who is trying to make it big. Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio wrote the screenplay and borrowed some visual cues from Pixar's superhero movie The Incredibles into a world modeled after Silver Age comic books and 1960's tons. In 2010, it released to moderate success but must have gotten a good run near the tail end of the video rental store era as it has so far spawned off a trio of sequels and two spinoffs of the Illumination mascot characters, Minions. The fully CGI movie does have some admirable animation considering that 3D cartoons weren't fully polished over at the time.

Veteran amateur supervillain Gru has plans to capture the moon by stealing an experimental shrink ray device. His heist gets sandbagged by up-and-coming bad guy Vector who takes the shrink gun from him, and Gru's attempts to storm Vector's suburban stronghold keep getting met with failure. Vector has a sweet tooth for a certain kind of cookies sold by orphan girls, so Gru adopts a trio of sisters to infiltrate his adversary's home and steal the shrink ray. The flaw in Gru's plan is that he begins to become attached to the girls, even after he's gotten the shrink ray back. Gru's partner Dr. Nefario has the girls sent back to the orphanage after their recital gets in the way of their moon mission. Gru shrinks the moon after a trip in his homemade spaceship and just misses the girls' recital as Vector nabbed them in exchange for the shrunken moon. Gru manages to rescue the girls and returns the moon as the shrinking effects don't last very long, plus deserting Vector on the moon even though his emergency air bubble is bound to run out eventually.

Despicable Me starts out as an interesting idea for a film about criminal masterminds trying to outdo each other with super-science, but Illumination gave into the wider market and played it down for younger audiences. This could have been an appealing take on cartoon bad guys like Boris Badenov or Dick Dastardly where they get to take up the spotlight for once, even though they had to make it more sentimental by throwing some kids into the mix. There is some classic Looney Tunes-styled antics in this and impressive designs, however its hard to invest any interest in this outside of children who giggle at the mindless ramblings of the Minions to the point so badly that they got their own series of movies. Despite how much better this movie took on the idea of bad guys than Megamind did, it's still a major letdown.